McGregor and Malignaggi (right) (photo via @TheNotoriousMMA / Instagram

By FCF Staff

Recently Paulie Malignaggi claimed Conor McGregor hits hard, but not that hard, and one of the latter’s sparring partners says the UFC champ will do his best to prove otherwise.

Malignaggi has been brought in by the Irish star’s team to help McGregor prepare for his August 26th boxing match with Floyd Mayweather. Recently the decorated and retired boxer told Jim Rome that while McGregor has “above average power”, he doesn’t have “oh my God” power.

Since then, Irish boxer, and one of McGregor’s other sparring partners, Tiernan Bradley, wrote a column for Irish News.com. In it, Bradley had this to say about Malignaggi’s comments:

Paulie has only sparred Conor once, and that’s the one everybody’s dying to know about. I was in Paulie’s corner and although he hasn’t fought since March and is retired, he’s getting sharper by the day.

You can see he’s still a class operator, and it was an interesting spar to watch – more a full on fight actually. Conor told us all when Paulie came into camp ‘this is not a spar, I want to fight him. I’m ready for a war’.

Paulie was talking to him in between rounds, trying to give him advice, but then he was getting slapped in the face.

I saw what he said about Conor’s power and he’s playing a bit of a dangerous game because he still has more spars to go with Conor, and Conor will be out there to knock him out. He’ll want to show him he has ‘oh my God’ power.

Mayweather – McGregor will be hosted by the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.